Russia tops Obama’s hit list, not China - M K Bhadrakumar

[Jguo]

Russia tops Obama’s hit list, not China

Russia tops Obama’s hit list, not China - Indian Punchline

The India-Russia annual summitry had lately become a tepid affair — something like the anniversary of a boring marriage. How often can an aged couple arouse passion? But the upcoming event bringing President Vladimir Putin to Delhi next month promises to be exciting. Geopolitics may act like an aphrodisiac.
The time-tested relationship is coming under a rare challenge. A rank outsider threatens to barge into it and throw garbage at it no sooner than Putin returns to Moscow.

The pundits in India do not realize the sheer depth of the US president Barack Obama’s visceral dislike of Putin. It is an animosity felt in the blood and felt along the heart that the usually laid-back president can barely conceal, as the G20 at Brisbane revealed.

The general drift of the discourses by Indian pundits is that Obama’s forthcoming visit to India In January will be about cementing a US-Indian partnership in the ‘Indo-Pacific’. It may be true insofar as the US aspires to get India on board as a fellow-traveller (”lynchpin”) in its ‘pivot’ strategy in Asia.

Nonetheless, make no mistake that it is actually Russia today that tops Obama’s hit list — and not China. The Washington Post carried a fascinating opinion piece recently authored by two prominent American pundits who were evaluating how Obama could tackle the two troublesome emerging powers, Russia and China, that threaten the US’ global hegemony. Their conclusion?

They wrote: “The good news is that, unlike Putin’s Russia, China is not committed or destined to a revisionist path. President Obama’s trip to Beijing this month demonstrated that it is possible to steer the relationship with China toward a more stable course.”

Indeed, the heart of the matter is that Russia poses a challenge to the US’s global standing in a way that China does not and cannot for a foreseeable future.

At the end of the day, Moscow is the only power on the planet that has the capability to negotiate the global strategic balance with the US. China simply lacks that strategic prowess for one or two generations to come.

The US undersecretary for arms control and international security Rose Gottemoeller stated in a speech in Romania last Tuesday that Russia has more anti-ballistic missile interceptors than the US. She claimed Russia has 68 interceptors at the Moscow Anti-Missile Ballistic System (which is 24 more than the 30 interceptors currently deployed by the US in Alaska plus the 14 more that it plans to deploy.)

The raison d’etre of the relentless containment strategy toward Russia pursued by successive US administrations, therefore, needs to be put in perspective.

The huge strategic backdrop to the Russian-American rivalry has never really been in doubt for close observers of that relationship through the past decade and more, as it picked momentum through the ‘color revolutions’ in Georgia and Ukraine in the early part of the last decade, through Georgia’s war with Russia in 2008 and in the present Ukraine conflict. (See a hard-hitting Heritage Foundation paper dated March 2009 titled How the Obama Should Deal with Russia’s Revisionist Foreign Policy.)

The differentiated approach toward Russia and China on the part of the Obama administration is at once apparent. While the US is piling sanctions on Russia with a view to weaken its economy and force it to curtail its defence budget (which registered a 31 percent increase in the five-year period from 2008 thanks to the boom in the Russian economy), Obama had a most productive visit to China recently.

The qualitative upgrade of the Sino-American relationship is apparent from the White House readout detailing the outcome of Obama’s visit to Beijing. It should come as an eyeopener that the readoutsays, inter alia:

“The United States and China commit to work together in support of a shared vision for Afghanistan: a democratic, sovereign, unified, and secure nation. Together with Afghanistan, the United States and China agreed to convene a US-China-Afghanistan dialogue to advance this vision. The US and China agree to work together to support Afghanistan’s government of national unity, security forces, and economic development, so that Afghanistan cannot be used as a safe haven for terrorists. They agree to support and Afghan-led, Afghan-owned process of peace andreconciliation… they also commit to each support economic development projects and frameworks to foster Afghanistan’s regional integration and build government capacity.” [Emphasis added.]

In sum, the US is courting China as partner in the first circle of its strategies in Central and South Asia. Again, while the US has no worthwhile economic relationship with Russia, the Sino-American partnership is one of profound interdependency where each side has become a stakeholder in the other’s economic welfare.

Indeed, the US agenda to ‘isolate’ Russia can never work. Russia has been and still remains an avid ‘globalizer’. Its agenda of Eurasian integration is steadily advancing and is attracting worldwide interest. Around 40 states have officially sought free trade agreements with the Eurasian Economic Union.

Nor is the world caught up in a rift of competing ideologies today. Russia too belongs to the capitalist world. Hardly anyone outside the western world is in a mood to listen to the US, including even the close allies like Israel or Turkey.

Ironically, the Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal Al-Saud visited Moscow last week to discuss with Russia the state of confusion in the oil market due to the fall in oil prices.

As Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov put it, here, the two countries “see eye to eye” by agreeing on the need to keep a balance between supply and demand and to reject any “political or geopolitical factors impacting the market.” And this just before the crucial OPEC meet due in London on Thursday (which is expected to discuss cuts in oil production.)

Having said that, India is not like Saudi Arabia or Israel, which became Russia’s interlocutors only in the post-Cold Ware era. India, on the contrary, is one of Russia’s oldest and closest friends in modern history. Any erosion of that relationship would have a deleterious effect on both in strategic terms.

It is not so much the content of that relationship that matters as the relationship itself. Speaking of India, the relationship with Russia provided the anchor sheet of the country’s strategic autonomy for the past six to seven decades.

India diminishes without that anchor sheet — its capacity to maneuver shrinks, its ability to develop options gets affected, its confidence about an absolute certainty to fall back in an increasingly volatile international environment gets shaken. Suffice it to say, Russia is irreplaceable in India’s strategic matrix.

On the contrary, the US strategy toward India has consistently aimed at weakening the latter’s fixation over strategic autonomy (which has been the stumbling block in shepherding India into a US-led regional alliance system).

The concerted assault on India’s policy of ‘non-alignment’, the debunking of Jawaharlal Nehru’s foreign policies or the flattering talk pandering to India’s great-power vanities have only served this American objective.

No doubt, an erosion of Indian-Russian ties will serve the US’s business interests, too. Firstly, India is still Russia’s number one market for arms exports. By rolling back the Russian presence, a significant source of income for Russia dries up. This is one thing.

On the other hand, the US can never match Russia when it comes to transfer of military technology to India. The US will never give nuclear submarines on lease to India or part with an aircraft carrier. It is yet to translate into deeds its promise to give India reprocessing technology, as expected under the 2008 nuclear deal.

Without a strong Russian competitor, the US will be in a better position to keep dodging any worthwhile transfer of military technology to the Indian market.

Secondly, Moscow has a game plan to diversify its energy exports away from Europe by tapping the Asian market. The western sanctions have prompted Russia to seek new Asian partners. China has been a beneficiary. India too is potentially a big energy partner for Russia.

All in all, therefore, the visits by Putin and Obama to Delhi in successive months against the backdrop of the cold-war tensions in world politics pose a profound intellectual challenge to the Indian leadership. The bottom line is that a strong relationship with Russia enables India to negotiate more effectively with the US.

Therefore, Putin’s visit to India next month should not get reduced to a symbolic event, an annual ritual of sorts that somehow has to be gone through. It is crucial that Moscow does its homework — and the Indian side raises its expectations too — and packs Putin’s visit with froward-looking content that can reenergize the strategic partnership.

A disinformation campaign is already afoot in the American media aimed at poisoning the climate of Putin’s visit — the canard being spread is that Russia is ditching India and courting Pakistan.

Whereas, it will take light years for a truly strategic Russia-Pakistan relationship to shape up, if at all. Russia’s search to normalize relations with Pakistan is perfectly understandable, given the acute regional security scenario and Moscow’s keenness to retain a level of influence over the Afghan developments that impact the volatile situation in North Caucasus and Central Asia.

Of course, a strategic realignment may become inevitable in South Asia if India finally abandons its independent foreign policies and its strategic autonomy and instead aligns with the US in a manner that hurts Russia’s core concerns and vital interests. But under prime minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, it is hard to imagine that happening, whatever the self-styled pundits may be saying to the contrary.

Excellent points made by ambassador Bhadrakumar. A strong relationship with Russia gives India much more strategic depth and options, I hope the Indian leadership will avoid myopia and make the right decisions come December.

 

[The Unnamed]

good read. thanks for sharing !